


Breaking Point

by Annorahrose



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21620164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annorahrose/pseuds/Annorahrose
Summary: Molly loves him. She’s always been there for him. Given unquestioned and unconditional support. But everyone has a breaking point, and she may have found hers.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & Molly Hooper, Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper
Comments: 20
Kudos: 134





	Breaking Point

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilsherlockian1975](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilsherlockian1975/gifts), [MrsMCrieff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsMCrieff/gifts).



> Hi folks! So this is my first post in about five years, no beta, not Brit picked (I so love that term!), and mostly composed between 2 and 5am. Reviews are very much appreciated.
> 
> I’m gifting this to two writers who probably don’t know who I am, but whose works I have read and reread, and who inspired me to take a crack at this. I hope you enjoy this one even half as much as I enjoy yours!

———— Molly ————

Molly was utterly exhausted.

Between staff being on holiday and calling off ill, she had worked almost 36 of the last 48 hours. And to top it all off, about ten minutes before she was due to leave she had received a text from Sherlock that a body was on its way to St. Barts, with instructions to give the autopsy top priority.She replied that she was just wrapping up after a very long shift, so the autopsy would need to be handed over to Dr. Bradley to perform. His curt response came within 60 seconds.

_Unacceptable. This case is an 8.And Bradley is a moron. - SH_

She sighed and shook her head. 

_Bradley is more than capable. I, however, am so tired I can’t tell which end of the scalpel is up. - MH_

_ Molly, I will not accept substandard work simply because you are “tired”. Body is arriving within the hour, I will follow shortly. - SH _

_ Show up whenever you like, Sherlock, if you want the data immediately you’ll have to work with him. Some of us do not have the super powers that allow you to go without sleep or food for a week and a half. - MH_

She sent the text, muted her alert tones, locked her phone, and vowed not to look at it again until she’d had at least eight hours of sleep. It wasn’t just the physical aches of the hours she had spent on her feet, she was also completely exhausted mentally. Her brain had not stopped whirring for the last two weeks, not since the incident at Sherrinford.

That infamous phone call had come in just about ten minutes after she had rung off with her cousin Lily - there had been a terrible car crash and her Auntie Helen had been killed. Auntie Helen had been a second mother to Molly, and the shock was still settling in when Sherlocks name popped up on her caller ID. She debated answering it, but shook the thought off. She didn’t have the attention to spare, even for him. When his second call came in almost immediately, she knew she would get no rest until she talked with him.

And oh, what a talk that had been.

“You say it first. Say it. Say it like you mean it.” 

“I love you.”

He had stumbled over it at first. His second time, however, it was smooth, confident, and sounded to all the world earnest and sincere.

A little part of her believed him. She couldn’t help it. The pilot light on her most desperate hopes had been reignited, only to be blown out as though by a cold wind mere hours later.Or, rather, an east wind.

She wouldn’t find out the details of the bizarre labyrinth Sherlock, John, and Mycroft had been forced to navigate, and to understand the part she had played until late that afternoon. All three of the men had been psychologically tortured by Eurus Holmes, Sherlock and Mycroft’s sister (sister?) as they moved from task to task, leaving death and despair in their wake. In the aftermath Sherlock needed to attend to his family as well as the urgent security issues at Sherrinford, but insisted that John be released from the crime scene immediately to tend to Molly. She could recall with perfect clarity each minute of the conversation - of the trio, he had been the least emotionally affected (which spoke to the severity of the mind games being played when one considers he was chained to the bottom of a well and nearly drowned). Then came the whirlwind of agents sweeping her flat for the hidden cameras and inspecting every inch of the building to ensure there really was no trace of explosives. Molly juggled their questions and movements with calls from family and friends trying to make plans for Auntie Helen’s memorial. Her brain had been in overdrive ever since. Her sleep was restless and shallow, and she couldn’t shake the feeling of weary resignation that followed her everywhere.

That had been two weeks ago, and it seemed impossible that life would ever get back to ‘normal’.Arriving home for the first time in three days, Molly used what felt like the last bit of stamina she had to make her way into her flat. She sighed as her keys and bag landed on the kitchen counter. She kicked off her shoes and she collapsed onto her settee. She just wanted sleep. Real rest. And as exhausted as she was, she thought she might just get it.

Not two minutes later Sherlock burst through the front door, removing his Belstaf and dramatically draping it over an armchair.

“Doctor Hooper. I am so sorry to interrupt your nap time, but a murder has been committed, and the justice system cannot wait for you to get your  _beauty sleep_. ”

Though the whole statement had been dripping with sarcasm, the last two words were delivered with a downright sneer.She had heard him use that tone with others, but he had never spoken to her like this. The tiny bit of rational brain she had left that was reminding her that he was probably severely sleep and food deprived was all that stopped her from cracking a cricket bat over his spine. 

“Go away, Sherlock.”

He flinched at her words and flat, defeated tone. He seemed to regroup, and he recovered his stance quickly, visibly forcing himself to speak kindly and politely. “Molly, I know that recent events have been extremely emotional, and I deeply regret the impact this whole situation has had on you. But you cannot turn your back on your obligations simply because you are ’tired’.”

Molly cocked her head to one side and considered him.

“Sherlock, I am not simply ‘tired’. I am absolutely exhausted. Not just physically - emotionally and psychologically spent. I have nothing left to give, Sherlock. You can give Eurus the checkmate.” 

Sherlock stiffened at the mention of his sister. “Molly, I don’t understand. I thought John explained matters. She poses no more threat to you.”

”God, Sherlock, stop it, I can’t do this anymore.” It was almost a whimper.

”Can’t do what, exactly?” Sherlock asked, looking utterly perplexed.

Molly could almost hear the last tether snap in her brain. She pushed herself up off the settee and squared her shoulders with his in the living room door.

“Oh, for god’s sake, Sherlock, you see literally everything else, why don’t you see this? I have loved you since the moment I first saw you.I put up with your frankly unreasonable demands, your demeaning deductions, and more than occasional cruelty. Christ, Sherlock, I was engaged to a man, a wonderful, sweet, compassionate man, mind you,who I left because he wasn’t you. He looked like you, he dressed like you, I tried so hard to pretend he was you.” Molly choked on a sob, and briefly brought her hands to her face until she could draw a ragged breath and continue. “But in the end he wasn’t you, so I couldn’t love him. I made my peace with it, Sherlock.” Her voice rose rapidly as the pain threatened to overtake her. “I made my peace with my lot in life. I know I’ll never be able to love anyone else. I learned to accept your professional respect and your friendship, a friendship that I cherish more than anything I’ll have you know, as all I would ever receive from you. And through it all, the one thing that held me right was the fact that you never spoke of it. You showed me that respect, and that gave me the strength I needed to accept things as they were. And then you called me and forced me to...” Her voice changed, morphing from rage into defeat and a heartbreaking sorrow. “I know it wasn’t you, you didn’t want to, I know why you did.” Molly shuddered at the memory of violation that invasion had inflicted - cameras in her home, her feelings being so callously manipulated by Eurus, her feelings even being known by this woman she had never met. “You were faced with the choice between seeing me killed or breaking my heart. I almost wish you’d have chosen differently, even if she had wired my flat to blow up. In the end, doing what you did made me love you even more, and Sherlock, I didn’t think that was possible.”

Molly looked directly into Sherlock’s eyes, and saw the pain, the impatience, and the confusion. He still didn’t understand. She couldn’t make him understand. Her own frustration washed over her like a wave of fire, and she flew at him, catching him in a passionate kiss.

She poured everything into that kiss. Her lips, her tongue, and her body cried out to tell him how deep and all consuming her love for him was, what words would never be able to convey. Sherlock was stunned, but responsive. His arms wrapped around her, his lips moved with hers, and when she deepened the kiss he did not object. He let her tell him what she needed him to hear so desperately. That almost made it worse. She pulled away and leaned, defeated and exhausted, against the doorframe.

“Do you see, Sherlock? Can you finally understand? I love you so much it physically hurts. It’s too hard. I can’t do it anymore, not after... I know it’s not fair to you, but...” She paused again, clenching her fist against the pain radiating from her chest. It overwhelmed her, and sapped the last bit of strength she had in her. Her face crumpled like paper and she started to slide to the floor. Sherlock reached out quickly, trying to support her fall, and as a result she ended up sitting on his lap, his arms tight around her, as she did the only thing she could. She leaned into him and sobbed.

————— Sherlock—————— 

Suddenly, the case ceased to matter in the slightest. His Molly was broken. He needed his Molly, and he was about to lose her.

His Molly.

_His Molly_.

He was silent for what seemed like an eternity. He wanted to apologize. He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to heal her. 

He had absolutely no idea how.

So he closed his eyes and released the shackles of his own defenses. He silenced the voices in his mind telling him that emotions were a weakness to be avoided at all costs. He thought sadly of how the lack of emotions, the lack of love, had robbed his sister of the only thing she might have used to cope with her own madness. He thought how very much he didn’t want that to be who he was. He remembered destroying that god-forsaken coffin, roaring in rage and agony at the pain he knew he had just inflicted on her - this woman who had only ever supported him, protected him, lied for him, and gave her heart for him. The words started to spill from him, unbidden, desperate, and raw.

“You’ve always counted, and I’ve always trusted you. Moriarty slipped up, he made a mistake because the one person he thought didn’t matter to me at all was the one that mattered the most.”   


These were words he had used before to try and tell her how he needed her, but they seemed somehow hollow now. 

“Please, Molly, don’t take this away from me. I’ve no right to ask this of you, I know, but I... can’t... lose you.” His voice broke as his own tears refused to be held back. Molly’s head lay on his chest, her own tears soaking into his shirt, and he moved forward to rest his forehead on top of her soft brown hair. “Please don’t leave me. Please, please, please...” His voice trailed into whispers, then into silence as he held her as tight as he dared.

Slowly, Molly moved her arms from where they were hugging her knees and reached around him. At first resting them on his, then tightening to hug him, to hold him, and they rocked together as they cried themselves into silence.

Finally Sherlock spoke. “I love you, Molly. And honestly, I’m not even sure what that means. It’s not logical, I’ve no idea how to cope with it. But there it is. I’ve lived without you, Molly, and it made my world a much darker and lonelier place.”

Molly finally pulled her head from his chest and looked up at him. Tears were still streaming from her eyes, which were red and swollen from crying. Her face was blotchy, her nose running, and she looked a mess. After a moment she looked down, self-consciously wiping her nose on her sleeve and skirting his eyes.

Sherlock may have been remarkably clueless about human nature, but he could see she didn’t recognize the depth of his words. So he spoke to her the same way she had spoken to him. He lifted her face gently and kissed her. Just as she had, he spoke through the kiss, letting his body guide him through the communication. He was terrified and desperate and he loved her so much, and the force of that hit him harder than anything ever had before. He wanted to protect her, and be protected by her. He wanted her light and her warmth and her joy. He wanted to be the man she already thought he was.

Communicating this way was extraordinary. She took in the information without sound, and he felt her responses. Disbelief, pain, hope, longing, and desperate love. He shifted on the floor so his legs were under hers, and he held her tight around her waist. When he finally broke the kiss, he didn’t pull back to look at her - instead he leaned into her and buried his face in the crook of her neck.

They stayed there for a long time, just holding each other, listening as their breathing evened out. Molly sighed. “I’ll do the autopsy. If I go now I can have the information for you by five or six am, so you can catch Greg first thing...”

He laughed in exasperation. “Christ, Molly, I don’t care about the fucking autopsy anymore. This case might be an 8, but you, Molly Hooper, are a perfect 10. Let Bradley do it, you can review it later and see what he missed. You are tired, and you need rest.”

He could tell she wanted to argue; she knew that she wouldn’t be able to retrieve everything Bradley would miss, but he was right. She needed rest. “Can we compromise? I’ll call into Bradley and tell him to hold off on the autopsy, and I’ll do it first thing tomorrow?”

He chuckled into her shoulder, and threaded his fingers into her hair, holding her head against his. She was just so Molly. His brilliant, sweet, golden-hearted Molly. “Yes, we can compromise.” 

Silence fell again, and it wrapped them in a cocoon of comforting peace. “Will you stay with me, Sherlock?”She had never asked him for something so bold before, but the request felt utterly natural, like she’d asked him a thousand times before. 

“Yes, Molly, I’ll stay with you. I don’t think you could convince me to leave, actually. Come, let’s get you sorted out so you can sleep.” 

He released her and they both moved to stand. He held her hand as she rose, guided her to the bathroom by the small of her back, and only broke contact when she entered and began to brush her teeth. He called into St. Barts himself, asking Bradley politely to leave the autopsy for Molly. Bradley’s voice was deeply suspicious, as he had never heard Sherlock Holmes be polite to anyone, but he agreed to hold off.As he spoke, he moved swiftly through the flat, making his way to Molly’s bedroom, laying out a pair of fleecy pajamas for her from her dresser, and retrieving his own from her closet. He paused, thinking about the fact that he had left little bits of himself around the flat for when he used it as a bolt hole. Instead of returning them, she simply cared for them - laundering his clothes, cleaning and reserving the mug he most favored- and kept them for when he returned. So many implications. His mind buzzed as he processed all the new points of view, and he had to consciously still himself. He wanted to give Molly the focus she so richly deserved. His thoughts could wait. Quickly he shed his clothes and slipped into the pajama trousers. He was just pulling his T-shirt over his head when Molly came back into the room. “I’ll go have a quick wash while you change.” he said as he ducked into the bathroom, leaving her to change in private. He found his spare toothbrush in its usual place alongside hers, and his heart tugged a little at how close she always kept him to her. Heading into the bedroom he found Molly sitting on the side of the bed, brushing her hair. He watched for a moment as she pulled the brush through her hair, marveling at how utterly beautiful she was. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t seen it before. 

Beautiful as she was, he also saw the exhaustion in her face. It hurt him to see it, knowing he caused it. 

“Here, let me.” He took the brush from her and sat behind her. He brushed gently, taking care not to pull. Molly sighed. The gesture was so sweet and thoughtful, and so incredibly intimate. When at last he put the brush down, she sighed again and leaned back into him. His arms automatically wrapped around her, and he kissed her temple, her cheek, and then reached around to softly kiss her lips. She tasted so sweet and his heart fluttered. He broke off the kiss far sooner than he wanted to. His desire for her was incredible, and his body screamed out for him to kiss, touch, lick, explore... but this was not the time. Right now he showed his feelings by thinking of her needs, and his overwhelming desire to take care of her. “Come, lie down properly...” he said as he moved out from under her and onto the other side of the bed, keeping his arms around her as she settled into him and wrapped her own arms around his waist. She giggled softly and he looked down at her inquiringly.

“Bradley must be so confused right now. Sherlock Holmes, being polite. He must be wondering if he’s lost his mind!”He smiled and chuckled with her. Bradley was an idiot, but he was speaking on behalf of Molly, and she was much too kind.

Suddenly, Molly shifted, pulling away from him just slightly so her head was level with his and she could look into his blue green eyes. Her fingers brushed his cheek, and he turned to kiss them at her touch. She gently guided his face back to her and waited for his eyes to meet hers again. “I’ve never said it to you face to face, you know. Just those words. I love you. God, Sherlock, you can’t know how much.” His hand covered hers over his cheek, and his eyes fluttered closed at the way his heart stuttered. There was so much he wanted to say, but he restrained himself. Molly needed rest, and he would see to it that she was cared for. He opened his eyes and replied.

“I love you too, my beautiful Molly.” He kissed her with as much tenderness and love as he knew how. Then he pulled her against him and tucked his head over hers. “Sleep now. I promise I’ll be here when you wake.”


End file.
